


Estateless

by Natalman



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Angst, Antediluvian evil, Gen, Masochist Midoriya Izuku, Other, crawling chaos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:40:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23029480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natalman/pseuds/Natalman
Summary: You will carve yourself a new road. Leading only, I fear, to ever more tenebrous places.So steel yourself and remember: there can be no madness without bravery.Your new road may take you through hell but perhaps it can lead us to our salvation.
Relationships: Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku & Rappa Kendou, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 13
Kudos: 40





	1. The New Roads

**Author's Note:**

> A new piece of insanity by me? Yes, obviously.  
> I have had the idea for this for a while now and am glad to have started it.
> 
> Thanks to Gotsh0cks from the Hoard for the editing  
> and for keeping my writing from straying too far from its goal.

_ "You may not remember our once venerable house… opulent and imperial. It is best that you never do, for it has become a festering abomination! I ask you, no, I beg you, never seek it out! My sins cannot be forgotten, however my research may aid you to drive the horrors I have wrought upon the world back... to the Darkest Dungeon." _

* * *

To say that he had no idea how to take anything he had read in the past hours was an understatement.

Was this some practical joke? Some weird elaborate prank being played on his family? No that didn’t make sense, why would anyone do that? No one they knew would own such a box, nor would they have anything to gain from sending them this weird thing.

That left one real explanation: Everything in this box was real.

They had received this box after the death of a distant relative of theirs, it had contained a few items of varying degrees of importance.

The box in question was an antique steamer trunk. Antique certainly was the word, it looked a few carved in runes away from being some mystical artifact. It had more locks than it had keys for them and the lid was so massive and heavy that it took both him and his mother to actually open the damn thing.

The trunk as they had found, contained an absolute treasure trove. Gems, old coins from various places, crests, small old looking portraits. All genuine articles as his mother had found, she had almost fainted when she was told how much even a fraction of the little gemstones were worth.

They could probably rest easy, never even needing to do anything their entire lives anymore and still live comfortably by just selling a handful of them every decade or so.

Those little things were however uninteresting, simple baubles that had nothing but monetary value.

The books, however, were  _ far  _ more interesting. Five heavy volumes, bound in red leather, each adorned with a strange metal arch that had five spikes in it.

He had found them in a hidden floor panel of the box, together with four other odd objects.

The first was a black, shimmering stone. Looking at it made his head hurt, something was odd about it but he could not tell you what if you asked.

The second was a vial of what appeared to be blood. He didn’t know what it was doing there but he had the feeling that it had greater importance when he read the books.

The third was a chunk of rock with a turquoise crystal cluster sticking out of it. Now this one, he  _ knew  _ was not a natural thing, it appeared to spread if ever so slowly, to whatever it touched. He had kept it wrapped in the same blanket he had found it in to ensure it wasn’t going to harm anyone.

The fourth and final one was a strange small stone idol in the shape of a tentacle. Carved all around the pedestal of it were strange symbols from languages he hadn’t seen before, let alone could find anything about online.

* * *

The longer he read the books, the more he wanted to both know and the more he prayed to whatever god would listen. Because the contents of even one of these books had to be made up by diseased minds. They simply  _ had  _ to be stories someone made up.

Everything in the first book detailed a gigantic expedition manned and led by one of his ancestors long, long ago. It spoke of countless grueling things he forced his work force through and of how lavish his own lifestyle was. It was almost a little too extravagant to believe.

He would have stopped reading them, even mocked them if not for an earnest anecdote in the first book. A small story of something that happened during the later parts of these excursions within the small hamlet his ancestor had supposedly called home.

* * *

“ _ Madness, a fascinating phenomenon of the human condition, it takes many forms and I have seen countless of them already. Priests, who in bouts of rage denounce the gods they once worshiped. Doctors, who in their despair do more harm than they ever did good. Guardians who kill their own charges. Warriors who come to harm their own allies. _

_ Only recently have I encountered a kind of madness that aids rather than hinders. A freed thrall from a faraway land joined my hired hands recently. A massive brute, about as lacking in mental capacity as he was in subtlety, however his strength and ferocity was not to be trifled with. _

_ However, his brute strength appears to hide insecurity and an unstable mind. He returned recently from an expedition, the rest of the workers I sent with him nowhere to be seen. Questioning him yielded no results beyond his fellow workers finding themselves beaten and bloodied if not killed outright for the most trivial of reasons. _

_ His untamed rage made me fear that perhaps it would be more advantageous to have him join his missing coworkers, however one of the hired hands managed to convince me otherwise without so much as speaking a word. _

_ The man was as close to worthless as you could physically get, a downtrodden beggar before he joined my workers and one of the least useful ones even then. What he did however, I shall not forget anytime soon. _

_ The thrall had decided to aim his rage towards him, for what reason I could not tell you. Usually the end result was merely a broken and whimpering soul. This individual however, appeared to not care much for the beating. _

_ No matter what the thrall did to him, no matter how many bones he broke, no matter how many teeth he was messing by the end. The man stood back up, without a word, smiling and in his eyes I saw not rage, not fear, not tears, but care and pity. _

_ When the thrall finally ceased, his rage subsided, he and the man became friends. Through sheer stubborn tenacity and an unwillingness to bend or break the fool had managed to turn this malevolent force of nature into a changed man. _

_ The man himself became known among his peers as ‘the flagellant’, merely a curious reference to a rather obscure self punishment rite used in some monasteries. These days he seems to have embraced it. _

_ For all my distaste for single minded behavior, that man, in all his foolishness has shown me that even the most hopeless endeavor can be successful. _

_ That, even in one's darkest hours, one can find radiance.” _

* * *

There were a few reasons that could move a sixteen year old boy to stake out his own life in his own apartment.

Gaining independence, wanting to not worry that his parents walked in on him and his significant other in private moments or just plain feeling that they needed to get away from their family for a while.

Izuku Midoriya was not having these, normal and average, kinds of concerns when he asked his mother if he could take a large stack of the gems that old steamer trunk had and sell them to stake out his own claim on life.

No, no such luck for him. It was a preventive measure, he wanted to ensure that whatever nightmares the books of his ancestor brought to his doorstep would only be at his doorstep,not his family's doorstep.

His mother had been strangely supportive of the idea that he would live on his own a few hours away from her. He hated having to do this but the alternative was worse,  _ far  _ worse.

Even just  _ reading  _ the first book of his ancestors had given him nightmares that felt too real to be ignored. Dreams of endless armies led by corpses and other nightmarish things he could not speak of without shuddering. Whatever his ancestors had found was real and it was not happy that he knew of it.

He had noticed that falling unconscious seemed to not count as dreaming, which translated to him forcing himself to stay awake until he passed out several times over the past few months.

The enemies within his dreams however were less concerning than the ones he found while awake. It appeared that what his ancestors had forgotten to include within their warnings of: ‘Meddle not with things unless you are prepared’ was that opening leather bound books counted as meddling apparently.

Every shadow he so much as noticed seemed to start flickering as if alive, every noise in any area so much as darkened even slightly, became amplified to the point of being unbearable. Only in full brightness or complete darkness did he feel as if he could find respite for even a moment.

His research on the local cults and connections to the greater picture his first ancestor had painted in his book needed to be postponed by the fact that he needed to consider how to play off his decision to stop pursuing heroics.

Of course people wouldn’t believe it, least of all his ‘best friend’ Katsuki Bakugo. The longer Izuku had read the books the more despicable he found the guy. He had so many similarities to his own ancestors that it was genuinely sickening.

He  _ seemed  _ to have good intentions certainly, but good intentions did not excuse stepping on and over every last individual that wasn’t yourself.

* * *

“The fuck do you mean you’re not dreaming of being a hero anymore you useless shit?”

Only Bakugo Katsuki, Izuku thought, could take offense to the idea that you’d take his advice.

Advice that had been hurled at his head for more than a decade mind, usually peppered with being called useless, pathetic and a plethora of other insults he did not care enough to remember.

“E-exactly w-what I-i s-said Kacchan.”

Izuku hoped, if not almost prayed, that Katsuki would just leave him alone. He didn’t need Katsuki on his back all the time looking over his shoulder.

He could tell that Katsuki was not buying it. At all. However for some bizarre reason the ash blond powder keg backed off. Which was a strange experience when you were used to being lifted by the scruff of your shirt daily for daring to have a dream.

“Tch.” Katsuki turned around and started walking away, his hands in his pockets.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re up to Deku but whatever it is you better stop. You’re even more of a shivering wimp than you used to be.”

Izuku could not help but notice that even Katsuki’s goons were baffled by his change in tone. It felt like he had some ulterior motive for letting Izuku go but Izuku could not have told you why.

He waited as the goons trickled away, trying his hardest not to draw attention to his backpack, or more importantly the notebook that was very visibly sticking out of the top.

It wasn’t like the others he used to make. Twelve volumes of quirk analysis had given way to a single book designed with the express purpose of deciphering the methods of his ancestors.

A lot of strange things his ancestors had written about were far easier to do in modern times as a lot of modern commodities made searching for ingredients and keeping track of things such as moon phases trivial.

The first thing he was trying to create was a certain kind of magic concoction that his first ancestor had crafted to allow him to see hidden writings and even see perfectly fine in the dark.

Apparently his most ancient ancestor had a bit of a fear of the dark. Izuku could tell why, because even as he left the school yard he could feel shadow like claws grasp at his backpack and the back of his clothes.

The longer he had spent in the dark of his room, reading the first of these cursed books the more he realized the truth about this world. There was something unnatural and horrifying hiding just beneath the surface.

Even as he only scratched the surface of the truth, a dark force had already started conspiring against him finding more. The source of the shadow claws was apparently some creature simply known as the ‘crawling shadows’, an ever present existence that sought to remove all sources of forbidden knowledge unless it was warded against correctly.

Fortunately even the slightest bit of light, even so much as a candle made it harmless. Apparently the ancestors had found that if you could actually see the damned thing it left your possessions alone entirely.

The concoction that Izuku would be forced to craft was known as ‘The Brew of Cursed Million Eyes’ which he was certain was for one, a mistranslated name and two, the name of a marching band.

That aside, the herbs necessary to make it were a bit obscure but far easier to get than they would have been hundreds of years ago. The main problem with making this stuff was that it could only be made during a certain moon phase and only during a certain time of night.

The brew once made, needed to be applied to one's eyes within minutes and if you did It wrong and were too fast you basically burned your eyes with a magic concoction. If you were too slow the magic was gone and all you got out of the affair was the tendency to flinch if you looked at brighter light sources.

* * *

However, right now Izuku was more concerned with something else, the brew would have to wait another week before he could make it.

The concern at the back of his mind right now is that in his search for some of the more occult hot spots in Musutafu he inadvertently needed to wander into the rougher parts of town. This time specifically, one of the worst parts the city had.

Expecting to get into a fight in this area was like expecting for the next sunrise to happen. Which in hindsight didn’t mean much to Izuku, knowing the things he knew now meant that the concept of ‘tomorrow’ was rather alien.

You kind of began living in the ‘now’ when the concept of potentially being dissolved by a shadowy nightmare monster was a constant in your new life.

“Are you serious? You arrogant bastards thought that knives were going to be enough to kill me? People like you make me sick. No honor among any of you!”

Izuku was barely paying attention to the commotion he was walking in on. He was following a trail of something that the first book had referred to as an ‘Alhazred’ line. It was apparently a sign of the borders between dimensions being weakened, he had found them all over Musutafu.

“Who the hell are you?” The loud gruff voice that had been yelling in the background asked.

Only now Izuku's senses focused on his surroundings and immediately found himself in a rather awkward situation. He was in what was essentially a giant cage, or at least some kind of fenced off court.

That was the less concerning part, the beaten and bloodied bodies all around him however, were more concerning. What was an even  _ more  _ concerning and pressing matter was the wall of muscles and rage he had walked into.

Kendo Rappa was about as intimidating as a person could physically be. An absolutely massive individual with light brown hair that seemed to fall just far enough to barely hide his glinting yellow eyes.

“Well?! Are you here to fight me or what?!”

Izuku paused, wondering for a second what he should say, then an odd feeling overcame him. It wasn’t fear, but rather, confidence.

Despite being tired, probably malnourished due to his own ineptitude with cooking, and more than a bit ragged thanks to the constant nightmares, he was confident.

Confident, that whatever his own insanity told him to do was going to work, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

**_‘Barbaric rage and unrelenting savagery make for a powerful ally.’_ **

“H-Heh. Y-You think you scare me? W-What I-I have seen would break a lesser man.  **What I know would** **_break_ ** **you.** ”

To Izukus surprise the brute didn’t respond with words, choosing to forego speaking by letting his fists do their work.

**_Crack_ **

**_CRack_ **

**_CrAck_ **

**_CraCk_ **

**_CracK_ **

With every punch Izuku could have sworn at least one bone was broken, with every hit he felt closer to his own demise. And yet he stood. And yet he refused to fall.

“Stay down,” he could hear the brute say. Was there a small sense of doubt in this man's voice?

Despite this order, despite the fact that everything he knew right now was pain, he rose to his feet, unsteady, yet with certainty in his actions.

“ **STAY DOWN!”** Even if Izuku could not hear it, there was a desperate rage in the voice of this brute. A despair that no one understood.

**CRACK**

Everything was swaying, everything hurt, his body felt like giving away, and yet.

And yet.

**_Teetering on the brink, facing the abyss..._ **

He rose back to his feet, his body wasn’t shaking anymore, there wasn’t any pain anymore. For the weaker minds, this was a sign of their end. That even their bodies had decided to just give up.

For someone like him? It meant it was all still real.

“No,” he spoke softly.

“I won’t.”

Kendo Rappa did not know who this boy was, how the boy had somehow survived his onslaught but what he knew was, that even if he killed this boy, he would  _ lose _ .

There he stood, unmoved despite being covered in his own blood, despite his feet seemingly being ready to give way at any moment.

He stood and was smiling. There wasn’t rage in his eyes. No triumph. No glee.

Pity.

Forgiveness.

These were the only things Kendo Rappa saw staring into the bloodied green eyes of the boy before him.

“What is your name?” Izuku speaks with a tone both shaky and yet perfectly calm. He doesn't even care for the broken bones.

“K-Kendo Rappa,” the brute says without knowing why he’d tell him so.

“Kendo Rappa? I think I’d like a friend with that name.”

Kendo was more than a little lost now, he had beaten this guy into the ground for long enough that the sun had started going down and yet here he was, wanting to be his friend regardless.

It was almost a little ironic, his first friend.

A man he almost beat to death.

“Izuku Midoriya, in case you’re wondering. Now let’s leave this place, it is filthy here.”

Kendo would never understand why he followed this man. Never fully anyway, but he would never come to regret it.

* * *

Kendo followed as the bloodied, shaking boy began to lead him to the boy's home. It was during this silent march when he felt it, if only the slightest amount.

Reverence.

“Stay.” Izuku almost commanded as they entered, he wasn’t walking straight or thinking straight anymore but that didn’t matter, concerns for later.

Kendo sat on a lone chair in the living room, wondering what his new friend was planning to do.

Izuku merely moved through the living room into a small back chamber.

He turned the lights in the little chamber off completely.

Shakily wielding a pen into his blood edged vision he began to write something in a new book. It would not be leather bound, untainted by a long forgotten past of callousness and arrogance.

Written among his own blood was but the first of his steps into his own path, a single sentence giving purpose to his suffering.

**_Ruin will be brought to our family….unless, even in our darkest hours, we find radiance._ **


	2. Uncharted Territory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A light is snuffed, an enduring darkness is brought upon us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Gotsh0cks for his amazing editing work, as always.

_ "...Say your farewells to your old home...such as it was. For I ask you to leave it behind, not merely for your own safety but for that of your family. Our task ahead is grueling and thankless. The only solace we will be granted is that those we left shall see another sunrise... for we will not be guaranteed the same gift...." _

* * *

The longer Kendo Rappa spent with Izuku Midoriya the more his reverence to this enigmatic madman grew.

He only understood a fraction of the things his new friend was talking about yet he could not help but to be impressed with him regardless. Few, if any people casually spoke about the inevitable end of the world as they knew it while pulling loose teeth out of their mouth.

Fewer still, would then inspect said teeth (molars in Izuku's case) with bemused curiosity and declare them useful for future rituals.

Only Izuku Midoriya could do all of that while in a physical condition that would kill anyone else.

There was something unnatural, almost  _ divine  _ about his resilience and calm.

Among the many, _ many _ things that should have bothered the beaten Midoriya, the only things he actually seemed irritated by were the cold air and the itch of his T-shirt. Kendo found himself confused but slightly amused at the boy's constant adjusting of his t-shirt, the word 'ABSOLUTION' written in bold across it.

After tossing his shirt into the trash can and bandaging his forearms and hands, the bandages stained red almost instantly, Izuku returned to Kendo’s side elaborating on the strangeness he had been living with.

The more Kendo heard the less he doubted his friend, because even hearing only a little of it had the same effects that reading the first book had had on Izuku. Shadows at the edge of the small living room they were in flickering as if alive and creeping slowly towards them.

Crawling shadows were one of the weakest manifestations of the maddening darkness, appearing as mere shadowy translucent fingers,hands and eyes, their appearance was the lesser of their evils, what made them dangerous was that longer exposure to them made one forgetful and even longer exposure drove you mad. Fortunately for most they only sought out those who possessed knowledge they should not have.

“You do not have to fear them, n-not yet anyway, so far their attempts at stopping us are rather mundane. I have no intention to let t-them succeed, at least not within our lifetime. A time which I may say is invariably drawing shorter as w-we speak.”

* * *

Izuku’s return from the brink of death and the subsequent bout of stalwart resurgence that had immediately followed it, had granted him boons and curses alike.

His injuries were in a strange state of flux, seemingly present yet not impeding him at all. It was a gift from the Flagellants of old, men and women alike that through their suffering gained power beyond that of normal people.

Usually such a boon required one to be devout towards a higher power to counteract both the pain and the closeness to one's own demise. Izuku, in his efforts to unravel the mysteries behind the horrors that plagued the world, had long forsaken the possibility that a higher power that did not desire humanity's end existed.

At least, that is what he had concluded until his encounter with Kendo. At the moment he felt closest to his death, he could feel it. 

He could  _ almost _ see it.

A light.

Not just any light,  _ the _ ‘Light’, the mysterious force his ancestor had mentioned as the source upon which several devout members within his work force seemed to draw from. Izuku, who despite not being devout to any belief system, had been granted aid by this  _ ‘divine’ _ power.

  
  
  


**Order.**

**Purity.**

**Justice.**

He came to believe that ‘The Light’ was less of a divine being and more these concepts being given shape and power through mankind’s unwavering belief that such things had to exist within the cold reaches of the cosmos. 

That was his theory anyway, he had nothing concrete to base that assumption upon.A foolish belief? Possibly, however Izuku had gotten wise enough to not scorn what few forces would aid his cause.

As for curses, Izuku had contracted one that sadly was inevitable given his past, nervous disposition. A stutter had been forced upon him, a reminder of his once fearful self that even after his return from death’s door clung to his very soul. Every power had its price, being given another chance at his life had the price of a constant reminder of his past. 

It may not have seemed like much to an outsider that he now repeated a letter in a single word in almost every sentence but for one interested in the occult such a thing could be devastating in the wrong circumstances.

Incantations specifically were now out of the question for him, meaning he would require someone else to recite them for him. That was however, not going to be a problem for his first few experiments.

* * *

“When I came to this area I was following something the b-books refer to as an ‘Alhazred line’, you can s-see it in the sky.”

Izuku motioned to the overcast sky. It had been a few days since he and Kendo had become friends and he figured now was as good a time as any to let him in on what he had been doing there.

“I’m not sure I follow. I see a line in the clouds but that looks rather normal to me.” Kendo said with a bit of doubt in his tone.

“Keep an eye on it f-for a bit and you notice what I mean. The clouds t-themselves move but the line does not.”

Kendo did as instructed as he kept following Izuku along the small streets, sure enough the location and shape of the line in the clouds didn’t change but the clouds themselves kept moving, as if the line was some kind of blind spot.

“Over h-here.” Izuku instructed, they were standing in front of what appeared to be a forgotten cemetery. It appeared that it was entirely walled off with no entrance that one could simply walk into.

“E-each of the lines leads to a place where artifacts of times long forgotten are held. Naturally t-these items are not to be trifled with. I-I suspect they are currently altering the world around them a-as a way to sustain themselves or bring in more fodder for their power.”

Kendo contemplated this statement a bit, “What was your plan for this place? Even if you know where they are, I doubt you have the physical strength to deal with them if they protect themselves.”

“I-I know, I have a plan for that. So far I h-have merely scouted these places. Going against these forces alone is u-unfavorable. I w-wish to ensure however that as few people as possible are involved. M-my ancestors sacrificed all lives b-but their own. I w-will not make the same error.”

Kendo was intrigued at the mere implication that Izuku was searching for these places of power in an effort to find what was causing these alterations to the world and fight them off rather than joining them. He would have guessed a quirkless man would seek allegiance with forces like that, not destroy them.

Izuku had been rather open about his quirklessness, Kendo could not help but be even more impressed, if only because it made his previous actions seem even more rooted in conviction rather than hubris.

“First h-however I need a way to see it all more clearly. Their troops won’t be hard to spot b-but the higher forces hide themselves with greater efforts.”

“I take it you have a way we could do that?” Kendo asked, making his intention of joining Izuku known with that question in the process.

“Yes. Y-you realize that this won’t be something you can back out of easily right?”

Kendo laughed. “I have fought people to the death for as long as I can remember and I’d keep doing it with or without your cause to follow.”

“W-well. Are you w-willing to leave your family behind?”

“Hah! Look, as long as I get to fight strong opponents I’ll leave this damned country if you asked me to.”

Izuku grinned a crooked smile at that. At least his new friend was in no hurry to abandon him.

* * *

“So, what exactly does this stuff do aside from smelling like it’s rotting?” Kendo tried his damnedest not to throw up from the smells they were currently exposed to.

They were standing in a forest clearing far off from Musutafu’s roads. While it was the dead of night it was Summer so it wasn’t nearly as cold as it could have been.

Izuku had been working on this concoction, which was lightly simmering in a large cast iron pot, for the past couple of hours now. There were a lot of specifics to it that had made Kendo hope that Izuku knew what the hell he was doing.

Finding fresh versions of the herbs and mushrooms necessary to make this stuff was a difficult affair even with modern aids like online shopping.Mostly because Izuku needed this stuff on one specific day and it needed to be less than a few days old. He silently thanked his lucky stars that many people were greedy so procuring them was mostly a matter of ‘how much of a bribe is too much of a bribe’.

Izuku and Kendo had drawn several large circles of chalk and salt around the cast iron pot. Several of them were necessary to actually complete the ritual for the brew while others were there for their protection. They hoped that they had gotten all of the symbols correctly, as the books specified that getting them wrong could have disastrous consequences that they would rather not think about too much.

Fortunately for both of them, there were no incantations to recite or dances to be performed for this ritual. Kendo's voice was as overbearing and rough as the man himself, completely unsuited to the subtlety and clarity required for incantations.

“W-well for one we should be able to see in the dark once we apply it to our eyes, at least to some degree. The o-other main property is allowing us to see past certain illusions. Unfortunately the lesser p-properties vary so we might have to deal with...  _ complications _ . B-bridges to be crossed when we reach them.”

Before Kendo could question what Izuku was referring to with  _ ‘complications’  _ the concoction started changing. At first they just thought the pot was boiling over but the color changes as well as the oddly colored mist emanating from the concoction hinted that it was actually working.

Had Kendo been more interested and curious in mysticism he probably would have been enamored, as Izuku was, that magic of this kind actually existed in this world and wasn’t merely theory.

Izuku for his part was fascinated by all accounts, even if he believed in his ancestors’ works. Seeing it work for the first time was concrete proof that it was all real and not a series of strange coincidences.

“So we’re putting this stuff in our eyes?” Kendo asked as the concoction stopped changing, it had taken a rather peculiar appearance, looking black as tar with strange purple-red-ish stars glimmering in it.

“Y-yes that is what the book instructs. We have to b-be decently fast as well. In a mere minute or two the application w-will be useless,” Izuku said taking out an eye dropper he had prepared for this occasion.

Another commodity of modern life that had made applying these sorts of things with accuracy easier. With the certainty that Kendo had come to expect from his friend Izuku pulled a little bit of the liquid into the eye dropper and applied it to his eyes.

“Grrrrrgh...” Izuku had almost been a little too fast with the application as it still was painful to apply. Keeping his eyes shut he handed the eyedropper to Kendo before slowly blinking as the pain subsided.

Everything was blurry for a few seconds before everything gained an unusual sharpness, even colors he normally couldn't see in the darkness were perfectly clear. It felt as if they weren’t in the middle of the night, but rather the middle of a bright sunny day.

Kendo had paused for a second before applying the concoction to his own eyes. Experiencing the same effect after a few seconds they both looked around and at each other.

Izuku noticed that from the outside it temporarily looked like Kendo had the outlines of purple eye shaped lines in his own eyes. He presumed this temporary effect was supposed to act as a visual cue for those who did this whole thing alone in a room somewhere.

“What is this?” Kendo asked as he looked down at his chest. A small gray and red glowing spot was visible in his chest in both of their visions.

“I a-am not entirely certain. However i-if I had to guess, it’s likely your quirk,” Izuku said calmly but oddly, fascinated.

“What?”

“I s-suspected that quirks are not what people think they are. T-that perhaps they were not naturally given to humans but r-rather some kind of power given through the things we try to fight.”

“So it appears that I am not the only one searching for the truth of our world,” a calm voice said.

The two of them were immediately on guard glancing around, Izuku specifically being far more concerned than Kendo, he was still weak and having kept himself near death's door over the past week to ensure to keep his focus had made him rather uneasy.

“You have no reason to be alarmed,” the voice said as the person it belonged to stepped from the bushes.

“Give me a good reason to believe that,” Kendo snarled as the person came into view.

“Rappa-san. This is not the time, l-let us hear them out first.” Izuku calmed his ally, Kendo merely snorted, annoyed but following the order regardless.

“So, who might you be?” Izuku asked.

The person came into full view now, even through the darkness they could see them perfectly now. Gray short hair, a mask covering most of his face save for a single eye. Most notably he had six arms and was rather buff despite looking to be about Izuku's age.

“I am Mezo Soji. Like you I have been researching the...unfortunate implications of our world. I see that you too have found a way to see what was not meant to be seen.” Mezo pointed to his own visible eye, the same purple lines shimmering briefly.

Izuku was slightly fascinated, Mezos quirk was far more visible than Kendos was, strange lines emanating from a single core into his arms.

“Hmph. You’re right. Unlike you we also don’t know how to turn this glow vision off.” Kendo grumbled.

“That requires merely a bit of sleight of hand,” Mezo said bemusedly, waving one of his hands in front of his own, turning his own vision enhancement off.

Izuku grumbled slightly. “Thank y-you for nothing, ancestors. C-could have written something about that for blood’s sake.” Izuku waved his hand in front of his face, becoming slightly annoyed as the colors of the world did indeed change back to their original states. He made a mental note to include this information for future uses of this ritual.

“So you have your ancestry to thank for this burden as well?” Mezo observed.

“That d-depends on what you see as a burden,” Izuku said, narrowing his eyes.

“I intend to find the source of h-humanity’s suffering and bring an end to it. If you w-wish to call that a burden then I suppose that would be it.” Izuku couldn’t help but wonder a little if Mezo was on their side or working for their adversaries.

“Have you considered that it may already be too late for such an act? If your ancestors could only make memoirs of the events that happened within their time, then perhaps saving this world is already beyond our abilities,” Mezo said darkly.

“P-perhaps, however I am nothing if not stubborn a-and unwilling to stand by a-as our world is slowly brought closer to oblivion,” Izuku countered.

Mezo pondered this response for a few moments. “I am glad to see that you, like I, have come to that conclusion.”

They could tell from his tone alone that Mezo was smiling from behind his mask.

Something bothered Izuku, Mezo’s presence was a bit too conveniently timed. For now he would have to keep an eye on Mezo even if he claimed to be on their side.

“I-I propose we meet at another time and another place. While the night may still be y-young Rappa-san and I still need to a-adjust to these changes.”

Izuku hoped that his stutter hid his intentions well enough that Mezo did not catch on.

“A decent proposal. There are quite a few strange phenomena around Musutafu that an alliance between the three of us would be well suited to investigate.” Mezo said as calmly as he seemed to say anything.

“I h-have already scouted a cemetery that appears to hold an artifact worth investigating. I p-propose we meet there by the end of next week.” Izuku said trying to remain calm. Something was definitely wrong, they had managed to draw the attention of something in the area and if they didn’t leave within the next few minutes they would be in for a fight they were not ready for.

“Agreed, I presume we speak of the same cemetery. I have so far only found one with an artifact, the Alhazred line leading to it was rather difficult to miss.” Izuku could tell that Mezo was also noticing the strange feeling in the air.

Kendo was scanning the area with his eyes, something hostile was looking at them but he couldn’t tell from where. “We ought to go, boss. You and ninja boy here can chat about weird shit once we recover.”

Izuku silently cursed and blessed Kendo’s ability to both play along with subtleties and yet be blunt enough to make decisions easily. He had to remind himself to not bring him to possible big negotiations later.

“R-right. Shoji was it? We will meet a-again, for now we will be on our way.”

With that and nary a glance back, the two left the area as quickly as they could. Looking back up the hill they had been on, they noticed that Mezo had disappeared.

They could however, see something moving within the firmament as something strange moved from the sky to where the pot they had left behind was. They couldn’t make it out clearly but before Kendo got the idea to try and see it with his newly enhanced vision Izuku stopped him.

“Do not risk losing your mind so s-soon. For all you know it could be aware you see it the second you activate your vision. This... Mezo Shoji knew it was there the entire time and tried to play it off as if he d-did not. It i-is better we leave for now and remain oblivious until we are ready.”

* * *

“You don’t trust them,” Mezo Shoji observed.

“I would not say that, I am merely cautious. That stuttering one, he knows more than he lets on. Perhaps even more than he told his ally.”

Standing there was a young man with a bird's head and a strange shadowy bird-like creature seemingly growing out of his abdomen. Fumikage Tokoyami and his ‘quirk’ Dark Shadow made for a strange sight.

“ **HIS SOUL SPEAKS OF AGONY, HIS MIND DRIPS WITH A THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE LONG FORGOTTEN,”** Dark Shadow spoke, a strange reverb in its tone.

“Indeed, his ancestors are similar to ours, they knew what was happening, though I suppose, his were of a less... benevolent nature,” Mezo observed.

“ **MALPHAS, OUR BROTHER IN ARMS, HAS BLESSED HIS FAMILY. UNTIL HE SHOWS HIS GRATITUDE WE SHALL REMAIN UNSEEN.”**

* * *

“So, what exactly do you think this will do?” Kendo asked, sounding only slightly concerned.

“W-well ‘The Blood’ is said to grant power to those who use it. H-however, in what way the books do not s-specify.”

Kendo paused, blinking. “You realize that consuming random magic blood and hoping it doesn’t immediately kill you is really, really,  _ really  _ stupid right?”

“D-do you have any better plans?”

“No. But I know that dying isn’t a plan either.”

“Death's door is second nature to those who refuse t-to stay dead until the job is done. I s-suspect I will either grow stronger or weaken myself with this. I-I am too stubborn to die.”

Kendo frowned, he didn’t like this, at all. The eye spell thing was dangerous enough since Izuku was going off old writings by long-dead crazy people, but he couldn’t even imagine what this old blood could do.

“Grrr. Fine, I swear if you die I’ll drag you back here screaming if I have to,” Kendo conceded.

“I do r-recommend that you do not open the door no matter what you hear,” Izuku smiled warily, he knew this would not be pleasant.

* * *

Izuku bolted the door shut and waited until he heard Kendo lock the door from the outside with a key. Though Kendo suspected that if things  _ did _ go wrong any locking mechanism was pointless.

Activating the Sight, he could see strange writings on the vial, but sadly found he could not read them. He had opened the page in the first book that spoke of the vial and the blood inside.

* * *

“ _ For within blood lies power, that much is certain, however all power requires sacrifice. Know that if you consume the vial I have hidden within this chest, you cannot return to normality but may be able to grant yourself or someone else the power needed to fight the madness of this world.” _

* * *

Izuku took a deep breath, opened the vial, and drank the blood inside in one go. It was as vile as one might imagine drinking ancient blood could be. After a bit of cringing, he decided to spend his time writing before the effects took hold, whatever those effects would be.

“ _ For within blood, we merely find power. However it is within our souls and minds we find true strength.” _

Izuku paused as he could feel his fingers shaking, he could slowly feel the usual numbness disappearing slowly and being replaced by a searing agony.

It spread fast into every part of his being, making him grit his teeth and double over onto the desk. He braced himself the same unending resilience he had faced Kendo with before repeating his own words to himself.

“Ruin will be brought to our family….u-unless, even in our darkest hours, we find radiance.”

Once more, he spoke.

“ **RuiN wILl bE brOUght UPon uS, uNLess wE BRing darkNESS TO THE RADIANCE.”**


	3. Weak and Foolhardy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This first expidition at least seems to promise sucess.   
> Remind yourself however, that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Gotsh0cks of the hoard for editing!

**“** **_Leathery hide, covered in feathers of pure ebony, bile that blights even the healthiest constitution. Claws as long as daggers, and teeth as sharp as razors….Eyes as numerous and as piercing as the stakes that once strung them to walls. What makes any Abomination terrifying is not its physical properties, however, but that the mind that lives inside it still remains that of a man...”_ **

* * *

On the outside Izuku Midoriya was writhing in agony, his fingers drawing bloody lines into his desk, silent screams emanating from his twisting form as his vision blurred into a mass of colors and endlessly stretching shadows.

If one were to observe his first transformation from the outside, one would behold something that looked vaguely like a mass of limbs and bones twisting and turning themselves around, trying to find the right places to slot into only to fail in gruesome fashion for quite some time.

* * *

On the inside, Izuku Midoriya found himself, person to giant malformed crow monstrosity.

_ Well. _

**N** **_o_ ** **.**

That was not entirely accurate, rather, the monstrous nightmare before him would better be described as an eldritch interpretation of a crow.

From where he stood it was the size of a city block, a gigantic amalgam of countless wings, claws and wicked scythe-like teeth, a maelstrom of feathers and bones surrounding a titanic crow skull.

Within its eye sockets were the skulls of smaller crows each of them with glowing red eyes.

Izuku was, to his own surprise, unimpressed.

When his life had devolved into a never-ending nightmare of writhing appendages and things from beyond the veil of reality that tried to corrode your mind, a tornado of black colored bird bits was far from the most terrifying thing he had seen.

“ _ On blighted wings they were carried, w-with eyes like the fires of the underworld.  _ My a-ancestor spoke of crows like they were signs of the end itself. H-heh. Is t-that what you think yourself to be? Or p-perhaps you think of yourself as some divine benefactor like the three-legged crow Yatagarasu?”

**“...”**

* * *

There were things one simply did not do when dealing with sentient beings from worlds beyond one's understanding. Trying to invoke the name of another in mockery was one such thing.

The reason for this was simple; names held power. Invoking an entity’s name with unsavory intentions was an open invitation for the called upon entity to invade.

* * *

**_The Devil of Crows._ **

**_Builder of Castles._ **

**_Eater of Keeps._ **

**_Malphas._ **

**_“Granting its boons to all who called upon its aid, I swore allegiance to this nightmare in a vain attempt to increase my own power and influence. Looking back, this act did neither aid my own ill-conceived schemes nor will it, I pray, hinder my descendants' task.”_ ** __

* * *

“I-I-I s-s-sincerel-l-ly a-a-apo-o-ologize. P-P-Please n-never d-do t-that a-again.” Izuku was wondering if one was mentally shivering too much if it caused one's brain to start rattling.

**“...”**

He was used to all sorts of agony by this point but this experience was not something he ever wanted to repeat, there was only so much mental screaming he could endure.

“S-s-so yo-yo-you’ll he-help us ri-right? I-I mean I g-get if you w-won’t but we-we would really appreciate it. We’re wa-way un-under equipped anditwouldbereallyniceif...”

**“...”**

In his rambling state Izuku did not notice that giant crow skull pulling back slightly as if annoyed. How a giant crow skull could be annoyed Izuku did not even know but it apparently had that capacity.

An agonizing and alien pain wracked Izuku's mind, overriding any thoughts or feelings he once had.

Visually, his mental self was reduced to naught but a small green orb.

“ **_A CONTRACT HAS BEEN FORGED. A DEBT HAS BEEN REPAID. BEGONE!”_ **

With a sound like a cacophony of crow screeches Izuku's mental self was hurled back to the land of the living.

The screeching cacophony of crows and whipping winds was the last thing Izuku’s mind surrendered before darkness overtook him once more.

* * *

Kendo had gotten used to a lot of strange things while working with Izuku.

Strange muttering sprees, the reciting of old stories from his ancestors’ books, the general oppressive dread one faced when being forced to confront the possibility that the universe might be coming to an untimely end.

As such, he had expected a great many possible scenarios when Izuku had locked himself into that room.

The  _ ‘simple’ _ ones were that his new best friend either simply died or came back out perfectly unchanged.

The more gruesome scenarios Kendo imagined involved what might happen if he had to break the door down himself and discover on his own what lay on the other side. Would he find nothing but rotting flesh and bones where Izuku once stood, or worse, an unidentifiable monstrosity that words alone could not describe?

The highly unlikely and singular fortunate scenario was that his friend came back a forever changed but empowered individual, yet again.

What he hadn’t expected, was waiting outside of that little room for fifty minutes listening to his friend scream like a banshee before it went silent for a good ten minutes.

“Okay, I’m officially bored now. What the hell is going on in there?! Midoriya-san are you still alive?! Do I need to beat something disgusting to death?”

* * *

Izuku  _ really _ wanted to answer Kendo’s question but right now he was disorientated to the point where he was unsure where ‘up’ was.

Taking a moment to breathe, while also somehow scrambling to his feet, Izuku decided to go about this logically and take stock of himself.

The first thing he noticed was that his vision on both the left and the right side had seemingly tripled. His transformation had granted him two extra pairs of eyes on either side of his head. 

The second thing he noticed was that when he tried to stand straight he was now about as tall as Kendo was. He found standing straight to be painful, almost unbearably so, so he stuck to a slightly hunched position instead

A third was that his limbs now felt almost massive like he had gained quite a bit of muscle mass, he also noticed the claws on his hands and looked down at his feet. Said claws were not only as long as daggers but also a threatening shade of red. The skin on his forearms and lower legs looked and felt like slightly gnarled bird feet.

Another thing that came to his attention was that his head and mouth shapes had altered, from the feeling his claws and sense of smell conveyed it felt like an odd mixture between a bird beak and a canine mouth, with just as many sharp teeth as a wolf’s mouth might contain.

The last thing that came to mind was that once he scratched his head he seemed to have gained small black feathers across his entire head and his upper back.

* * *

Having taken stock Izuku was now confronted with another question:

“GRGGhghrggk S-Skreeeh?” He paused, blinked and suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to curse Malphas for making him even incapable of speaking.

He had the sneaking suspicion that his muttering had angered Malphas enough to take away his ability to speak while he was in this form.

If it was even a _ ‘form’ _ . For all he knew he was now stuck as…. _ whatever _ he was, forever now.

He wanted to scream, or at the very least growl about how Malphas had apparently deemed it unnecessary to leave him with the knowledge on what he had gotten himself into.

Contemplating for a moment he remembered that Kendo had asked if he was still alive, he figured that he might as well show the brute that he was still at least somewhat himself.

* * *

Kendo stood on the other side of the small door, rather confused about what was happening inside the small room. He was simultaneously worried  _ and _ hopeful that whatever Izuku had turned into was worth a fight.

What he  _ hadn’t _ thought would happen was something that looked like a hairless werewolf with a crow for a head would straight-up break the door off of its hinges.

Then it paused, looking at the door like it was really confused at what had just happened it made a small “S-Skreh?” noise.

Kendo blinked for a few seconds. “M-Midoriya-san?What the hell happened to you?.”

“S-Srkkkrhaaaah,” Izuku responded with something that Kendo guessed by his tone to be an annoyed  _ ‘Yes it is still me, thank you for noticing’ _ type of answer.

“...You don’t know how to turn back yet do you?” Kendo eventually asked, slightly bemused that this was the second time in short order that his friend had no idea how to resolve something he had put himself through.

Izuku just narrowed all of his six eyes at him with the implication that he only let the snarky comment go unanswered because he couldn’t speak right now.

“Well. You got any ideas on how to turn yourself back?”

Izuku just shook his head, because right now he really did not have an answer to that question.

“Hah. Well, I guess you’ll figure something out.” 

Izuku narrowed his six eyes at him, almost as if he was contemplating eating him.

“Hey don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one stuck as a giant wingless bird.”

* * *

To say that the two of them looked incredibly suspicious right now was the understatement of the century.

One was a hunched over, six-eyed crow monster that looked about as friendly as a murder of crows picking a corpse clean.

The other was a man the size of a brick wall with an incredibly sour disposition and the muscle mass of two bodybuilders combined.

Without making so much as a noise Mezo Shoji had appeared out of a nearby alleyway to the front of the cemetery wall which Izuku and Kendo had previously scouted.

“I must confess I did not expect you to be out here in the open. Let alone without your friend, though I am impressed that you managed to summon a crow beast to your aid.”

  
  


“Skr-rrhh.”Izuku growled, he noticed something when Mezo had stepped out of the dark, there was something, or someone, else there. 

With a mere two eyes you could not perceive it, even with a spell to enhance your vision. Thanks to Izuku’s current predicament however, he had an extra four.

He knew someone was there. Watching from the shadows.

“Yeah. My boss figured both of us going would be a bad plan and just sent me with his dog. Gotta say, it  _ really  _ doesn’t like just about anyone that isn’t me.”

Izuku narrowed his eyes at Kendo slightly, he would let his friend’s mockery slide, he had dealt with worse in the past decade.

“So ninja guy, how do we get into this place? Boss said there is no entrance.”

Izuku had to give Kendo one thing, he was smarter than he looked or acted. Izuku hadn’t told him to act as if he was his henchman or goon but just through their interactions alone, Kendo had picked up on the idea that he should use his appearance to deceive the other parties they would inevitably be dealing with.

For a guy who beat people to death on a regular basis, Kendo was quite a bit more cunning than most people would have liked. Izuku for his part thought the man deserved more credit than he got. You didn’t survive death matches against people with knives and guns entirely unarmed without being at least a little smart.

“There is. Your  _ ‘boss’ _ is merely not advanced enough in the rites needed to open it.”

Izuku again narrowed all six eyes at Shoji for a second, as his peripheral vision picked up on something moving in front of the six-armed man. A separate person. Possibly under an obfuscation spell of some kind.

“Skhrrrhg.” Izuku growled, he didn’t know who Shoji’s invisible benefactor was but he had the suspicion that they were the reason this guy had any kind of arcane knowledge in the first place. 

That to Izuku made sense, as Shoji had referred to Izuku as a ‘crow beast’, which was impossible to summon because such a summon did not exist. Shoji had apparently thought that referring to something that Kendo did not know of would make him seem more intimidating.

A set of parallels, he figured. Like himself and Kendo, Shoji was just the muscle with barely any arcane understanding beyond what he needed to know. It wasn’t that he was dumb by any means but he was clearly not the driving force behind his quest.

Seconds passed before the wall seemed to give way, creating an arch-shaped opening with five spikes through it. Izuku remembered this symbol well, the books of his ancestors had it everywhere.

Izuku followed the two large men into the cemetery, trying to identify the strange shadow that was also present but had trouble making out what it even was.

* * *

**_An ancient evil courses through these lands of the fallen, taking the souls of both those long dead and those yet alive._ **

Cemeteries, graveyards and other places of death, attract forces of an unsavory nature to themselves like mosquitoes. Be it small blights such as the restless spirits of the dead or larger horrors, they drew them all in never to let go like sinkholes.

This cemetery specifically, however, was tainted by something even more unnatural.

It took none of them long to feel a deathly chill course through their beings and a mere minute into their expedition the graves around them started cracking and crumbling.

It took a moment longer than that for skeletal creatures of all sizes to crawl out of their burial chambers.

“Geh. This place is even more tainted than we feared, I hope you’re rea-” Shoji paused in slight fear as he watched Kendo punch his way through the oncoming undead with what one could only describe as glee.

“Come at me! I signed up for a good fight and I will not be denied! Gahahaha!”

Izuku could not help but share in Kendo’s enthusiasm, he felt his new beast-like instincts itch to strike these creatures down as well.

“KRHAAAAA!” With a screeching roar that seemed to almost shake the ground, he charged after some of the undead that had crawled out of their tombs.

* * *

People with conditions similar to Izuku’s were once tortured and driven to resent their beastly halves.

Izuku, by comparison, was blessed with a unique variant of this affliction.

Unlike his fellow human monstrosities, his feral side originated from within himself instead of survival of torturous ordeals. As such, while it did possess its own individuality it was merely the other half of the same coin finally given the opportunity to shine.

This allowed him to utilize it without incurring  _ too many  _ problematic tendencies.

Too many, being the operative term.

* * *

Rage and vicious desires given form rarely had an interest in subtlety, as Kendo, Shoji and the currently unseen fourth were currently observing.

“GRAAUAHAG!” Another beast-like screech tore through the air like a serrated blade. Izuku stood there, broken and scattered skeletal warriors all around him, his six red eyes shining from the darkness. He wanted- No. He  _ needed  _ more.

A loud clattering sound brought the scene to a halt as what little light shone in the cemetery was drained from it within seconds.

The only remaining illumination came from a single spot near the opposite end of the cemetery fields.

A humanoid figure, clad in long faded yellow robes. The light was emanating from its head, which was merely a skull, engulfed in blue flames and encased in a cage.

Izuku was not patient enough right now to let this new being approach them, a thirst for battle and bloodshed having taken him even more than he liked to admit.

With the speed his beast form had granted him he rushed at the creature and within seconds reached his target.

A singular move from its gnarled, bone-like hands opened the creature’s robe. A shockwave of blue light pushed Izuku back as the creature's body was exposed.

Izuku recalled seeing a sketch of this entity in his ancestors’ books, beyond that there was only a small description of it, for even his ancestors had deemed it wise to steer clear of it.

**_“The twisted faces of the damned, piled high, and cloaked in malice.”_ **

**_\- The Collector -_ **

Izuku paused for all of a moment.

“SKRHAAAAAAAA!”

Izuku loosed another roar however, it was met not with silence but with a rattle, as several of the severed heads detached themselves from the creature and gained bodies of the same sickly blue light that this entity created.

Countless undead stirred, each joined by one of these blue glowing adversaries.

Kendo and Shoji meanwhile had managed to join Izuku.

“ **YOU FOOLS. STIR NOT THE DEAD LEST YOU JOIN THEM,”** an annoyed but bombastic voice chided as a bird-like being of darkness began batting several of the smaller undead away from the group.

Their fourth and by extension, fifth members finally revealed themselves. Fumikage Tokoyami and Dark Shadow had hoped to stay out of this confrontation but with The Collector present that was out of the question.

What little was known of this entity already made it out as a dangerous opponent to face, even as a team. But add in two bloodthirsty warriors with no healing abilities and a tendency to rush off on their own, and it was downright impossible.

“What do we do now? I was ready for a fight but this...” Kendo said as he was looking around at this endlessly encroaching hoard, “ is more like a war.”

  
  
  


The amount of undead in the fields made it clear that whatever forces had brought the dead back to life had also bent probability in its favor as there were many more undead present than there were graves.

“Well for all it is worth, we either fight them, or we die,” Tokoyami said glaring around.

“...Not to be pessimistic but I believe both are going to happen.” Shoji had used his quirk to generate several extra arms with additional eyes to look around. There was no end to this horde, even if they carved themselves a path they would only get caught by the hundreds that remained.

“Srkkkk.” Izuku meanwhile, had gotten wise that charging off had been a terrible plan.

“ **AT LAST YOU SEE THE ERROR OF YOUR WAYS, JUST IN TIME FOR YOUR AND OUR END,”** Dark Shadow growled as the four of them slowly backed into the center of the field.

**_The ground quaked._ **

* * *

Within moments, the entire cemetery field went from an ordinary place of death to a frozen wasteland of death. While none of the four men present were familiar with the sound that a glacier forming made, they imagined it sounded quite a bit like when the entire cemetery froze over and turned into a massive iceberg around them.

Izuku whipped his head around, trying to find what or who had caused everything to just freeze, even The Collector was completely frozen and unable to do anything, only the four of them were unharmed.

In the stillness of the moment, Izuku’s six monstrous eyes caught the icy glint of two steel grey human eyes far above them. 

“Hrrrgggh...” With the kind of sound a scared rat made, Izuku was forcibly and painfully transformed back into his human state, shivering like a scared child.

“Oh hey. You turned back finally...What are you staring at?” Kendo asked confusedly, before tracing Izuku's frozen gaze to its source.

Standing there on the glacier around them was a woman with white, shoulder-length hair, gray eyes and a cold expression on her face. She wore light blue and gray body armor and small crystals of ice were formed all around her.

Staring at them from far above was the Number Two Hero of Japan:

**Rei Korikami: Blizzard Heroine – Okami**


End file.
